Five Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to halt an inquiry into Gov. Sarah Palin’s dismissal of her public safety commissioner, arguing that the Legislature has exceeded its authority by conducting a “McCarthyistic investigation.”

The lawsuit, filed in the state’s Superior Court, comes as the McCain-Palin campaign has escalated its involvement in the bipartisan inquiry, providing Ms. Palin’s lawyer with help and mounting a public relations offensive.

Note the gratuitous reference to McCarthyism … this is, of course, an appeal to emotion meant to marginalize the investigation and make it seem a baseless witch-hunt. So not only is Gov. Palin engaging in Nixonianism, McCain’s campaign is dismissing it using the emotivism tactic.

This article includes the (expected) caveat:

The [McCain/Palin] campaign said Tuesday that it had no involvement in the decision to file the lawsuit.

I assure you this is absolutely not true — anything being done on behalf of either McCain or Palin is being coordinated by their campaign staff. The extent of their involvement may be small, but do not be fooled into thinking they did not approve of this maneuver. They most certainly did. (By the same token I expect that there are Obama factors in Alaska fueling this investigation from their own angle.)

That Palin would attempt to defy her own legislature on an investigation she had previously claimed to want to cooperate with, is also more than a little immature. A true conservative who really believes in the rule of law would not want to interfere with it, in such a way … but that apparently isn’t stopping her.